Fugue
In music, a
fugue is a contrapuntal compositional technique in two or more voices, built on a subject that is introduced at the beginning in imitation and recurs frequently in the course of the composition. The English term
fugue originated in the 16th century and is derived from the French word
fugue or the Italian
fuga. This in turn comes from Latin, also
fuga, which is itself related to both
fugere and
fugare. The adjectival form is
fugal. Variants include
fughetta and
fugato. A fugue usually has three sections: an exposition, a development, and a recapitulation containing the return of the subject in the fugue's tonic key, though not all fugues have a recapitulation. In the Middle Ages, the term was widely used to denote any works in canonic style; by the Renaissance, it had come to denote specifically imitative works. Since the 17th century, the term
fugue has described what is commonly regarded as the most fully developed procedure of imitative counterpoint.